


The Winter Queen

by anamatics



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 03:19:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holly, all children in her world were taught, was the winter king.</p>
<p>TW: the briefest of mentions of past abusive relationships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Winter Queen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [turtlevenom7](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=turtlevenom7).



> I wrote this for OuaT-exchange on livejournal for the Christmas exchange for Turtlevenom7. Wickedpencils offered a quick beta. :)
> 
> The prompt I chose was Redemption/Forgiveness, but as I do not have the ability to write a novel-length story of how Regina and Snow work back towards an understanding of each other, I felt as though it was suitable to show the briefest of a moment between them. A step, as it were, on the road to an uneasy peace. (Complete with bonus!Henry asking lots of questions. Because I love him.)

There was something oddly therapeutic about winterizing gardens. It was a long and drawn-out process that only hard work and years of repetition can prepare a body for. Brushes had to be cut back, bulbs had to sit out, leaves had be raked, all before the bleakness of winter set in with the snow.  
  
She had never had a gardener.  
  
Once, work in the garden had been considered below her. At that time, the methodical practice of clipping and pruning had been denied to her. Now the fallen queen’s lips quirked upwards as she wiped at a streak of dirt that had somehow ended up on her cheek. She relished in this work, in this menial task that she had completed every winter for twenty-eight long years.  
  
If only Leopold could see her now, covered with dirt and no better than a commoner, she thought darkly. He’d probably have a fit.  
  
The water from the faucet was warm under her fingers; the dirt of her chore was now long gone. Yet she still lingered, enjoying the warmth that she could barely feel any more. Her fingertips had long-since been desensitized, the nerves there dead from years of placing her fingers into candle flame to draw the fire and heat out. It was yet another price of magic that no one had ever bothered to tell her about before she’d embraced the power that had ruined her life.  
  
Despite the water from the tap’s warmth she was still cold. The house was dark, empty, frozen like this land. There was a void within these four walls that could not be filled no matter how loudly she played music or turned up the television. There was no laughter here, no joy.   
  
She was not even sure that there’d ever been joy.  
  
Just lies. Lies upon lies and a hatred that she forces herself to stomach.  
  
Had she ever meant to be this person?  
  
On that bleak winter day, when Leopold’s body had been discovered and his daughter had sobbed into her shoulder, they’d crowned her the winter queen. She’d saved the d’jinn that time, at the price of his constant harassment. They’d called her weak at that moment.  
  
They’d learned.  
  
There was a sprig of holly, clipped earlier from the bush that grew beneath the dining room window, lying on the table in her foyer. From her position in the bathroom Regina could see a future stretching out into forever in that one small collection of prickly leaves and blood red berries.  
  
Holly, all children in her world were taught, was the winter king.  
  
Regina had taken it as her symbol during the first year of her reign. It was a powerful sign, the older generation was not entirely thrilled with the idea, but she had done it despite the advice of Leopold’s inner circle. It was the mark of a bleak future, an ill omen.  
  
The holly was the first step, an abdication of her power. She had all that she needed now, and she no longer wished for Leopold’s tainted throne.  
  
The gesture was largely empty, but it was the act of it that she wanted. To prove a point to all that would listen that she was ill-content with the status quo. No, to raise the stakes and step away from the power that had long-shaped her was the wiser course.  
  
The garden was now fully wintered, bushes carefully housed under worn wooden hatches almost gray with use and age. The bulbs for a spring she still was not sure that she’d live to see are tucked into the ground. The holly bush, ever green with blood red berries now stood a lone, silent king. The one piece of greenery left against the whitest of seaside winters.  
  
From the kitchen, the clock that sang out bird calls at the hour signified that it was now three o’clock - mocking bird. Henry had wanted it, and she’d conceded its purchase long before she’d ever come to know that it was a more painful reminder of his absence than most.  
  
It was another thorn in her side that she could live with, she supposed.  
  
The door opened at the appointed hour, and her son tumbled inside. His cheeks were rosy with the cold and his eyes sparking with something that Regina felt she had not seen in years. He was happy, carefree, like he’d been before that horrible book had found its way into his possession.  
  
“Hello?” He called, undoing his scarf and peeling off his jacket. He was growing up, and even now this year’s coat was starting to look too small. His cheeks were beginning to lose the roundness of youth and his body seemed to be stretching out in every direction. Sometimes when she saw how quickly he was growing, she wondered how tall his anonymous donor of a father had been.  
  
He left his boots strewn across the foyer.  
  
Some things never changed.  
  
He gravitated towards the holly sprig on the table, his fingers with too-long nails closing over the bundle. “Mom?” he called again, looking around as Regina stared hard at herself in the bathroom mirror for as long as she dared.  
  
The face that stared back at her schooled itself calm and kind – a mother’s gaze and a pleasant smile. It was all she had left to cling to.  
  
“Henry,” she replied, stepping out of the bathroom, her hands freshly dry and almost read from vigorous rubbing. “It’s good to see you.”  
  
He didn’t come because she wanted him to, or even because he cared. He was working very hard to get back to that point, or so Doctor Hopper promised. Regina still wasn’t sure that she believed the good doctor, but Henry was making an effort.  
  
After all, what’s a mother when you can have blood relatives?  
  
He looked down at the holly and back to Regina, eyes curious as they always were. She remembered those eyes most of all – they were the same as Emma Swan’s - the only thing she’d ever given him. “Are you getting ready for Christmas already, mom?”  
  
Regina laughed and shook her head. “No, Henry,” she explained, taking the sprig from him and carefully setting it back down. For it could not be bruised, could not break. It had to be perfect or the gesture would be emptier than she already expected it to be. “I picked it because it means something.”  
  
“It does?” Henry stared at it hard for a long moment, before turning his attention back to Regina. “Like more than the Christmas meaning?”  
  
She tried to recall the myth of the holly from her world, and tried to think of it juxtaposed against the one from this world. The two stories were so blended together in her mind that it was almost impossible to untangle the two stories. She would have to look them up later, to compare them.  
  
It would be easy to say that yes, the meaning was more than the one from this world. The problem with the meaning was that it was so wrapped up in what she intended to do that Regina could not state it so clearly. She sighed, fingers reaching out, hesitant. She still was not sure she could touch her son. She didn’t want to feel him flinch away.  
  
Henry, not to let the silence stretch on to infinity, asked, “Why isn’t anyone getting ready for Christmas?”  
  
At that her face fell. Holly was associated with Christmas in this world, the silly and positively confusing holiday that coincided with the winter solstice. Now that the curse was broken, she’d given up the pretense of caring for such traditions. She should have known that Henry would miss them.  
  
The words were like ash in her mouth, but she said them as evenly as she could. “It’s not celebrated - not like it is here, anyway.”  
  
He was the one who had so desperately wanted to be a prince, after all. The son of a princess and a queen. He was the most royal of them all.   
  
“What do you mean?” He asked, eye shining with an innocence that Regina had always envied. Her own was long gone. Henry, despite all that had happened to him, still clung stubbornly to that feeling and inherent goodness.   
  
She tilted her head towards the living room, and he followed her wordlessly. They fell back to the old silent communication of their tangled past – a mother and her son. She had answers to questions he couldn’t even think of yet, and she would always be that person in his life.  
  
The tale the fallen queen spun was that of a forest at midwinter. Cold and wet and never able to get warm. A bonfire to get warm, a song and then another. The darkest night of the year made the power of the light that they produced with this fire chase away the demons of old.   
  
“Are there presents?” Because, at heart, he was a child still.  
  
“No, son,” she replied, her fingers sweeping his too-long bangs from his eyes. “The time for presents comes at the high of the harvest.”  
  
His face fell and she leaned forward, a smile flitting across her face. When she spoke, her voice came low and conspiratorial, “I won’t let them forget that this world is just as important to them now as that one was.”  
  
He nodded, and she stood. Their hour was over and the northern woodpecker was trilling its song.  
  
“I’ll take you home.”  
  
The car ride was silent and Snow answered the door almost fearfully when Regina dropped her hand from Henry’s shoulder and knocked. Usually in such instances, Henry would run up the stairs three at a time, thus eliminating her need to walk him to the door. He was safe here, away from the scheming ways of all those who would dare to hurt him.   
  
“Regina,” Snow said, perhaps more hesitantly than she’d intended. She had always played that role well.  
  
Henry ducked inside with a quick, “bye mom,” to Regina and Snow stepped outside.  
  
They stood in silence for a moment, Regina caught up in the memory of that little girl who had once captured her imagination and momentary kindness. She was so much more innocent then - not hardened by life like they both were now.   
  
“I wintered the last of my garden today,” Regina began, looking down at the sprig of holly in her hand. It gleamed almost black in the yellow light of the hallway that lead to Snow’s apartment. “My holly bush has… grown quite a lot since last winter.”   
  
“You managed to get a holly bush to grow this far north?” Snow asked, eyebrows raised and maybe just a little impressed. Regina knew that look well from Snow’s childhood. Once, when they had both been innocent, Regina had though she could come to like the girl-child.  
  
“I would have been good at the sort of life warranted to the lover of a stable boy,” Regina shrugged, not really wanting to talk about the constant pain of that ever-fresh wound.  
  
Snow flinched visibly.  
  
Regina twirled the holly between tired fingers once last time before she held it out to Snow. “A clipping, for your holiday festivities.” The other meaning was left unsaid. She could never say those words, not truly, it was not her part in all of this.   
  
Their world still needed it’s villain.  
  
Snow’s mouth dropped open as Regina stood there, not really expecting anything, but desperate for any sort of a reaction. “Is this what I think it is?”  
  
“I’ve come to the realization over time that in our world nothing is how it first appears,” Regina commented, before she closed her fingers around the sprig of holly in Snow’s fingers. “I am the winter queen, crowned on a day not unlike this one.” She raised her gaze there, and met Snow’s eyes, “Once, I wanted nothing of this, now it is my burden to bear.”   
  
“Why are you telling me this?”   
  
Their hands were still joined. Regina stared down upon them long and hard. She swallowed once, and then spoke the words of her damnation in the eyes of all whom she dared to call her peers. “Because I am sorry that it happened this way.”  
  
Snow bit her lip and pulled back. “I understand,” the words were choked out of her mouth but Regina felt her spirits lift. “I’m sorry too.”  
  
“Take care of my son,” the addition felt out of place, forced even. Regina knew it had to be reiterated once more. Because Snow was a fool and her husband was not much better. “He expects a Christmas.”  
  
“I had wondered,” Snow admitted, staring down at the holly in her hand. “As the winter queen, can you not just tell him of our ways?”  
  
“He is a child of two worlds, Snow,” Regina explained. “He cannot be expected to give up all that he knows for an unknown he may never truly see just because he wants to.” She shrugged and added, “Doctor Hopper says that routine is good for a child in transition.”  
  
The words blanketed the hallway with silence. “There…. doesn’t have to be transition, if Henry doesn’t want it.” Snow said at length.  
  
A start. A spark. A beginning.  
  
“See that he is asked,” She said, and turned to leave. There was nothing else to say.   
  
“I’ll do that,” Snow replied firmly.   
  
The winter queen left the hall of the golden family that had taken her son with a heart lighter than it had been for a very long time.  
  
That night Henry called and asked if she wanted to pick out a Christmas tree with him and Emma later that week. “I know you two don’t like each other, mom, but Emma promised that you can hit her with exactly five snowballs before she’ll retaliate.”  
  
Now that, Regina smirked, was entirely worth agreeing to.


End file.
